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The ability to have your secure password data with you on all of your devices is one of the most important features of 1Password. Of course, strong encryption of your data is vital as well, but it is sync that ensures that you can use these strong and unique passwords across all your devices easily.

Ensuring that users have access to their data everywhere they need it is not always a simple process. Let’s take a look at the development of Wi-Fi sync in 1Password, and see some of the great improvements our developers have made lately.

The beginning of Wi-Fi

We begin back before the dawn of 1Password 4. The Wi-Fi Sync of 1Password 3 provided a… less than ideal user experience. When our developers sharpened their tools to craft 1Password 4, the initial version of 1Password 4 for iOS was released without the feature.

Users were not content with this omission and lobbied us by forum and by email and by all means necessary, declaring their love for Wi-Fi Sync (and as well they should!) Hearing their pleas, our developers went back to the Agile Forge and re-designed Wi-Fi Sync for its triumphant return in 1Password 4 for Mac.

Judging from the title, you might think this update is about Watchtower enhancements or properly formatting credit card numbers, but you would be only half right! 1Password 5.1 for Mac, rolling out now to the the AgileBits Store and Mac App Store, is all about sync.

In short, we completely overhauled how you manage sync for your primary and secondary vaults to save you time. In Preferences > Sync, you can now view all your vaults and how they sync, and change sync methods with a click.

Wi-Fi Sync users also get a whole new Preferences pane that makes setup much easier. Oh, and secondary vaults can now sync via Wi-Fi!

We packed lots of other great changes into v5.1 for Mac, from copying addresses in Identities with just a click to support for Portuguese. You can view the full changelog for all the details.

1Password 5.1 for Mac is a free update available now for all v5 owners. If you’re a Mac App Store customer, please leave us a great rating and review, they really help!

What’s a major OS X release without a major 1Password update? I don’t know, but we would rather not find out. That’s why you can now get 1Password 5 for Mac in the Mac App Store and our web store!

First-class Yosemite citizen

It was only a year ago that we released 1Password 4, and 1Password 5 for Mac ensures we’re ready for the next major chapter of OS X. We completely redesigned 1Password to be a first-class OS X Yosemite citizen—in fact, it requires Yosemite now—right down to compatibility with its new Dark Mode; if you enable it, be sure to check out 1Password mini in the menu bar!

1Password mini also got its own major upgrade. Besides Dark Mode, we redesigned it to be faster and more intuitive so you can fly through menus, anchor an item in its own window with a shortcut, and more. Plus, if you trigger 1Password mini with the system-wide shortcut (⌘-⌥-\ by default), it now conveniently appears in the center of your display.

Go for an iCloud Drive

If you want to use iCloud to sync with 1Password 5 for iOS, I am thrilled to say Apple’s next-gen sync is now available in 1Password 5 for Mac. iCloud sync also now requires the Mac App Store version.

The new iCloud sync is a really big deal. It’s faster and just plain better in every way, and you simply need to upgrade to iCloud Drive on all your Apple devices to sync 1Password 5 (note: we do not store your data in iCloud Drive. We use CloudKit, its underlying technology, for sync). That means you’ll need to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite all the things. For more details and a guide to making the transition, please check out our iCloud FAQ support document.

Wi-Fi Sync your attachments

Using Wi-Fi Sync to keep your data close to home? As long as you’re using the new 1Password 5 for Mac and iOS, I am delighted to say your attachments will now sync as well.

Upgrades and sales, oh my!

We’re so excited about 1Password 5 for Mac that we want all our v4 customers to have it for free! But what about people who have yet to buy a 1Password License of Awesomeness? No, we don’t actually call it that. But we should.

We want to help you out too, so we’re throwing a 30-percent-off launch sale! That means you can get secure and save a ton of time online for just $35!

1Password 4 for Mac has only been out for two months, but we just couldn’t wait to get you an early holiday present—our first major update! 1Password 4.1 for Mac is now available for our website customers, and it is waiting for review out for Mac App Store customers as well. "4.1" may look like a small update, but it packs some great big stuff, including something we’ve wanted for a long time: updating Login passwords right from the browser extension!

Now with 1Password 4.1 for Mac, when you update your password at a website (ideally using our Strong Password Generator!), our new save dialog has the option to create a new login or "Update existing Login." If you have more than one Login for the site, you can choose which Login to update. Toss in the ability to tag and add this Login to a folder on-the-fly, and this is pretty much the greatest way to create new Logins and update them down the road when the need arises.

There’s plenty more goodness where this came from, we also have: a new "Top" Item List Layout (yep, we brought back the traditional item list for the old schoolers), a new search-by-title option, printing (both individual items and your entire vault—careful with that last one!), some Wi-Fi Sync fixes, and more.

Check the gallery below for more highlights, get the full details in our changelog, or dive right in. Website customers can use 1Password > Check for Updates right now, and Mac App Store customers can check the store’s Updates tab.

A number of our customers want to sync their 1Password vault between multiple devices, but remain in complete control of their data, keeping it within their local network and out of The Cloud. We took a big step towards that goal earlier this month with the release of 1Password 4 for Mac and, among over 90 new features, the triumphant and revamped return Wi-Fi Sync. Today we take another big step with 1Password 4.3 for iOS, a free major update that now supports Wi-Fi Sync, among a few other new perks.

Wi-Fi Sync

As the name suggests, Wi-Fi Sync lets you sync your 1Password data between multiple devices on the same Wi-Fi network, leaving The Cloud entirely out of the process. We have detailed step-by-step instructions for setting it up between a Mac and iOS device, but in short: go to the new Window > Wi-Fi Sync option in 1Password 4 for Mac, and it will walk you through a couple of simple steps to get going.

More Goodies

In addition to Wi-Fi Sync, 1Password 4.3 for iOS now lets you change the browser agent of our built-in 1Browser to Safari for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, as well as Firefox and Chrome. We also have better support for iOS 7, though our full iOS 7 refresh is coming in a future, free update.

For some of our customers, having complete control of their data is paramount. They don’t want it leaving the confines of their home network, yet they want an easy way to sync their data between devices. Other customers have workplace restrictions, and our friends in China simply can’t access some cloud services. We recognize the gravity of these requirements, which is why we’re delighted to bring Wi-Fi Sync to 1Password 4 for Mac when it ships, and soon to 1Password 4 for iOS as a free update.

We’ve had great feedback from our Wi-Fi Sync beta testers, so I want to give you a peek at what’s in store for this upcoming feature (which, remember, is still in progress). We’re committed to providing a 1Password sync option that allows you to retain complete control of your data, yet conveniently sync between devices on your local network.

Setup is easy, and there’s a new, dedicated Wi-Fi Sync window in 1Password to give you complete control over when and how often you sync.

We built a simple system to let 1Password 4 make the initial handshake and sync between OS X and iOS, then easily find each other later when you need to sync again. You can make changes in either app and Wi-Fi Sync will make sure they, well, sync. This all happens seamlessly when both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, and all you need to do is tap the Sync Now option in 1Password for iOS. Your data never leaves your Wi-Fi network, it stays in your control.

We’ve been listening to our customers, and we’re thrilled to offer a new sync option that allows you to control your data, yet keep 1Password in sync between all your devices. The beta test has gone really well, and Wi-Fi Sync is coming soon to 1Password 4 for Mac and as a free update to 1Password 4 for iOS.

I have good news and good news, so I’ll give you the good news first: Wi-Fi sync is coming back in 1Password 4 for Mac and will be a free update to 1Password 4 for iOS. Some of our users want a local, cloud-less option to sync 1Password data, and we aim to deliver it soon.

The other good news is we need your help to test it, so we’re opening our Mac and iOS beta programs again to recruit a few good testers. Wi-Fi sync has been rewritten entirely from scratch and it will be 1Password-4-only, so we’ll need you to beta test both iOS and Mac versions.

Please note: we have not announced a release date for 1Password 4 for Mac or for when Wi-Fi sync will arrive as a free update in 1Password 4 for iOS. Right now we’re focused on making Wi-Fi sync great, and we’ll release as soon as we can get it there.

The response to 1Password 4 for iOS has been fantastic, and we can’t thank everyone enough! While reviewing all the great feedback and requests, we heard loud and clear that direct syncing between iOS and Mac is important for many people, and we plan to do something about it.

1Password 3 provided direct syncing between Mac and iOS via Wi-Fi syncing, and while it was great in it’s day, it was never perfect. Between the need for manual syncing and networking issues, it did not provide a great user experience. Over the years, our team fell in love with the ease of Dropbox and stopped using Wi-Fi sync altogether. Since none of us used it, and in light of the feature’s problematic nature for many of our users, we decided not to include Wi-Fi syncing when we rewrote 1Password 4 from the ground up.

When we released 1Password 4 for iOS, many people wrote in to explain that direct syncing was critical to their workflow. Some need it because of work rules, some because of regional restrictions that prevent access to sync solutions like Dropbox. Others simply prefer to keep all their data locally without depending on the cloud.

If you’re one of the people who requires the ability to sync directly, rest assured that we’ve heard from you that this is critical to your needs.

We’ve started on a new way to sync data directly over USB and it is already in private beta testing. We’re pretty excited about this because almost all of the support issues caused by Wi-Fi syncing were related to weird network configurations. By syncing directly over USB, we can avoid all those issues. Hopefully, we will never have to ask a customer to reboot their router again

We don’t have an ETA on when USB syncing will be available, but beta testing results so far have been promising. If you rely on direct syncing, please stick with 1Password 3 for a little while longer until the USB sync solution is completed.